When once ambition has passed its natural limits, its progress is boundless.

We are so vain as to set the highest value upon those things to which nature has assigned the lowest place. What can be more coarse and rude in the mind than the precious metals, or more slavish and dirty than the people that dig and work them? And yet they defile our minds more than our bodies, and make the possessor fouler than the artificer of them. Rich men, in fine, are only the greater slaves.

Genius always gives its best at first; prudence, at last.

He who would arrive at the appointed end must follow a single road and not wander through many ways.

Beauty is such a fleeting blossom, how can wisdom rely upon its momentary delight?

The man who thinks only of his own generation is born for few.

To preserve the life of citizens, is the greatest virtue in the father of his country.